This invention relates to an oil module for an internal combustion engine, comprising a carrier element that can be flanged onto an engine block of the internal combustion engine and carries at least one oil filter and an oil cooler. Said oil module is provided with channels for guiding oil and water, one of said channels being an oil cooler bypass channel connecting an oil inlet of the oil cooler to an oil outlet of the oil cooler.
An oil module of the above mentioned type is known from EP 0 816 645 B1. For this known oil module, it is provided that a bypass channel extending exclusively within the carrier element is integrated in said carrier element for a throttled bypass to the oil guidance through the oil cooler. This bypass ensures that, in case of cold and thus viscous oil, a relatively large part of the oil will flow—bypassing the oil cooler—to the lubricating points of the internal combustion engine to ensure adequate lubrication even when the lubricating oil is still cold. With an increasing temperature of the lubricating oil, an increasingly larger portion of the oil flows through the oil cooler, thus reducing the temperature of the oil to prevent thermal damage of the oil of the internal combustion engine due to excessively high oil temperatures.
Particularly in the automotive industry, there is a general endeavor to be able to produce different designs of an internal combustion engine in a modular manner. The maximum possible identical components are thus to be used for different designs of the internal combustion engine. The internal combustion engines will then differ e.g. by one design having a turbocharger and another design having no turbocharger. In their different versions, the internal combustion engines usually differ in performance with the consequence that there will be different requirements regarding the oil module and the oil cooler provided therein depending on the design of the internal combustion engine. These different requirements can be met, for example, by the bypass being differently designed, especially with a different passage cross section—depending on the design of the internal combustion engine to which the oil module is connected. If the passage cross section of the bypass channel is to be changed for the carrier element according to the above cited state of the art, it will be necessary to either change the injection mold for the die-cast manufactured carrier element or to subsequently mechanically work on every manufactured carrier element. Both ways are technically complicated and result in high costs which have a negative effect on profitability.